


The Chantry's Lessons

by bearonthecouch



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Chant of Light (Dragon Age), Character Study, Circle Mages, Gen, Religion, Templars (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23867716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: In all the Chantry’s sermons, “mage” is synonymous with “demon.”
Relationships: Alistair/Female Amell (Dragon Age), Female Amell & Anders (Dragon Age)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	The Chantry's Lessons

The Chantry’s lessons stick, seared into your skin by the cut of the cane, burned into your brain through endless repetition: “You have brought sin to heaven and doom to all the world.”

_“I didn’t even do anything,” Rhyanon pouts, curled up on her bunk, stubbornly rebelling against the authority of the Church and its servants in the world. Anders sits down next to her, looking both impressed and sympathetic._

_“You argued with one of the Sisters,” he points out, and he doesn’t bother to hide the smile on his face._

_Rhyanon smiles too, small and shy, but Anders always has known how to make her feel better._

_“She’s wrong,” Rhyanon insists. “The story’s about the Tevinter magisters. The first darkspawn. Not about_ _us_ _.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Can’t argue that. But you can see why they take offense to a little kid pretending to be a scholar of the Chant, right?”_

_Rhyanon meets Anders’s eyes. “Are they mad because I’m a kid? Or because I’m a mage?”_

_Anders’s eyes widen. Amell is never afraid to speak her mind, that’s for sure. One day it might bring worse trouble than the childish punishments she faces now. Even Anders isn’t openly seeding dissent among the apprentices - all he did was run away. He wants to tell her to be careful. She’s only ten years old. He knows she knows the consequences of her actions,and he wants to believe that every risk she takes is calculated. But he knows better: Rhyanon is more impulsive than he will ever be. When a situation is wrong or unfair, she can’t help herself. She jumps into the line of fire for him more than he wants to admit._

_He just sighs, and holds her gaze for a long moment. The anger churns underneath her surface, visible in the hardness of her eyes. Rhyanon’s been here long enough to understand that this place was never meant to be a simple school, or a comfortable home, or any of the lies they tell to placate the mothers whose children are ripped from their arms. She’s seen apprentices made Tranquil because they cannot control their power. She’s seen the templars get away with sickening abuses. No one cares about what happens to kids like them. In all the Chantry’s sermons, “mage” is synonymous with “demon.”_

_‘She’s wrong,’ Rhyanon had said._ _It’s_ _wrong - the whole situation, bigger than any one or even two of them. Anders tells her not to fight the templars, and she doesn’t. But the walls that have them caged aren’t just physical. There are walls made of words, too. And those are the kinds of walls she insists on tearing down, if she can._

_She does it in Irving’s office during their private lessons, sounding perfectly rational as she spins out her blasphemous ideas. The things she says make perfect sense; she can’t understand why they work so hard to deny her. Even Irving has made it clear that he cannot keep her safe if she insists on making trouble outside this little room._

_Rhyanon tries not to make trouble. The templars’ harsh blows and whispered threats frighten her. But it frightens her more that the endless repetition of the Chantry’s words is starting to erode her sense of self. Thus her outburst in the middle of this morning’s sermon. If she closes her eyes, if she really, really tries, she can remember a time before the Tower, when the Chantry was a place of light and comfort and a quiet sort of joy. There were holidays spent with her mother, father, and brother, and candles to ask for the Maker’s blessing. The priests preached the story of Andraste, not the Blackened City. Their words instilled faith and hope rather than fear._

_And when Rhyanon, forced to pretend to pray, kneels and bows her head, she closes her eyes and tries to remember what that felt like. Those memories slip out of her grasp as soon as she touches them, though, and she’s left with nothing but the pain as she kneels on the hard floor, the scrape of the rough wooden pew where she rests her folded hands, and the feeling of Chantry eyes watching her, a scratching at the back of her neck. Rhyanon knows the words to a dozen prayers, and she recites them without thinking, without believing in any of the words she’s saying._ “Confiteor quia peccavi nimis mea maxima culpa,” _she says, while thinking “You’re wrong,” and “It’s not my fault.”_

 _“Can you recite Threnodies?” asks the priest in pink robes, with a smile on her face. She comes to sit next to Rhyanon in the nearly empty chapel._ _  
_ _  
_ _Rhyanon nods. “By your will, all things are done,” she says smoothly. “Yet you do nothing.”_

Alistair whistles out a long breath. There is the quirk of a smile on his face. “You were pretty ballsy as a kid,” he comments. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re pretty ballsy now.”

Rhyanon smiles too. She shifts a little closer to Alistair and leans against his arm. His fingers start to comb gently through her hair.   
  
“You told me you used to get in trouble all the time.”   
  
“For playing pranks or skipping class. Not blasphemy.”   
  
Rhyanon just watches him, until Alistair sighs, and nods slowly.   
  
The Chantry’s lessons stick. Even now, he looks at Rhyanon and can’t help but hear the words, sharp like needles in his head: “Magic exists to serve man, never to rule over him. Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children.”

He knows that isn’t her. He’s watched Rhyanon Amell take on the weight of the world, fighting to save Ferelden even though she gets no thanks, and in fact has to deal with people being openly hostile to her because she holds magic in her hands. Rhyanon’s probably more devout than any of them; she has at least memorized more of the Chant than any commoner he’s ever met. He knows she has, because he has. Raised by the Chantry, the words seep into your dreams, into your blood. The Chantry’s lessons stick. 

“Rhyanon, do you believe in it?” he whispers, as he runs his palm up and down her spine. “Any of it?” 

She tilts her head back, searching his face for some clue of what to say. “Do you?” she finally asks softly. 

“Yeah, of course I do.” Alistair can’t imagine a world without the Chant, without Andraste, without the Maker. He finds comfort in the story even though he is fully aware that those words have been twisted to horrible ends. “What else is there?” he chokes out, letting his fear bleed into the question. If the Chantry is fallible and half-broken, as he knows that it is, then how can he believe in it? But it’s still better than the hollow ache of believing in nothing. It has to be better. Doesn’t it?

Rhyanon takes a shaky breath. “I can’t believe in it anymore.” And she sounds sad. She sounds lost. They took the bright smile she had dancing under the stained glass as a toddler, the comforting prayers when Mama tucked her into bed, and they corrupted those things, twisted them into nightmares of demons and darkspawn. They ripped away the colors and made it all black and white, and they told her it was all her fault. 

“I’m sorry,” Alistair says, as he pulls her close and hugs her tight. It seems like an appropriate thing to say. Rhyanon just nods. She’s sorry too.

**Author's Note:**

> apostate (n): a person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle.


End file.
